Resumen:

In this paper we provide evidence on the economic assessment of university education using Spanish university students’ statements about their wage expectations when they finish university and about their shadow wage or permanent minimum wage necessary to induIn this paper we provide evidence on the economic assessment of university education using Spanish university students’ statements about their wage expectations when they finish university and about their shadow wage or permanent minimum wage necessary to induce them to quit university. For that purpose, and given the qualitative nature or the declared wages, ordered response models are estimated. In order to allow that the quality of information differs depending on the student’s academic year, the estimation is done by course year based subsamples. The expected wages predicted by the model are very similar for both genders and, as a reflection of the improvement in information during the academic cycle, these wages get closer to the ones observed at the most advanced courses. With respect to shadow wages, predictions based on the model show that they are higher for students in the last years of the degree, when the opportunity cost of quitting is higher. Also, we find greater shadow wages for females than for males, even though the observed wages are substantially lower for women. This last result is in agreement with the higher relative return on university education in case of women, which is reflected by the higher propensity of women to invest in this kind of education.[+][-]